The Wildwood Community Center is the Heart of Wildwood and It Needs Your Help!
The Wildwood Community Center is not just what you can see - the building, the ice rinks, the playing fields, the toboggan hill, the Jackrabbit skiing, the Jackrabbit soccer. It’s not just what goes on inside, the winter canteen, birthday parties and all the programs like the Mom and Tots fitness classes, the playgroups.
It’s the celebrations like the Winter Carnival, Earth Day Picnic, Ladybug Picnic, Fall BBQ.
It’s the community groups it sponsors like those that create the winter ski and walking trails, the Green Team that keeps the Park clean of litter and maintains our green spaces.
It’s Wildwood’s Voice; the community meeting place, the link between Wildwood and the City of Winnipeg, the newsletter, the telephone book. It’s the place where we meet to discuss issues important to Wildwood, the place where the City and our politicians come to listen. It’s the committees it sponsors that let the City know what Wildwood wants ie. the new play structures, the tree and shrub plantings, all the trees in the green space getting pruned in 2011, the careful removal of dead elms to minimize damage to our natural spaces. It’s the Wild n
Woodsy that communicates the community’s activities, events, opportunities and issues.
And of course, it’s the volunteers who make it all happen. Without our volunteers none of this would exist and Wildwood would be a much different place, a much poorer place.
It appears that some Wildwood residents don’t understand how important the community center is to Wildwood or how important the money from the Fall Canvas is. The fact that it’s hard to get volunteers for some community center positions and the fact that only 6 out of 10 households in Wildwood donated to the community center’s 2014 Fall Canvas seems to indicate this. The annual grant from City doesn’t cover all the cost of running the center and the programs. The Fall Canvas covers the rest of the costs.
Without the community center, all the green space and playing fields along the river could be in danger of development. Without more community participation filling vacant community center board positions, there is a real possibility we could lose the community center and the green space.
A community, a neighbourhood is only as good as its residents. Be a good neighbor - participate, donate your time and money to your community.
Hugh Penwarden Manchester Blvd.